Answers
by Aki13th
Summary: "Why do we survive when there is nothing further to strive for?" Companion to Questions, but can be read separately. UlquiorraOC oneshot.


**This was made after my UlquiOC oneshot "Questions." If you like it, please read the first part. Enjoy. ^^**

It was never truly silent in Las Noches. True, there were often long periods of time in which not a sound could be detected in the endless halls, but the atmosphere was always trembling with the spiritual pressure of countless arrancar who wandered the still corridors. It could have been compared to a quiet pond; in the back of one's mind, there was always the muffled movement of other beings slipping through the lifeless water. In a world smothered by the silence of death, those who strove for survival made not a sound. They needed only to make known that they were still there. No other point had to be made. So they were silent.

It was this kind of silence that was disturbed in a white-walled room by the _click_ and _swish_ of a door opening. No response was made to the footsteps that entered or the _clack _as the door was shut again by a hand almost as pale as the walls, ceiling, and very nearly everything else in the moonlight-washed palace. When Ulquiorra Schiffer turned his gaze to the couch, he saw why.

The unnaturally pale-haired occupant of the room reclined with one foot propped on an armrest and the other knee crooked. Her left arm dangled off to the side, knuckles brushing the floor, and Ulquiorra noticed with some dissatisfaction that her right lay splayed over a book that rested on her chest. Her eyes were closed. The clip that usually kept her hair pinned up behind her head was wedged between the cushions so that the tresses spread like a halo around her head. It was a shame that they were anything but angels.

"You were reading again."

Scattering the dusty quiet, the statement brought about a drowsy grunt and then a long, deep inhalation, as though the female arrancar were taking the first breath of life after being dead for years. She sat up and stretched her arms, lowered her feet to the floor, and turned her ever-glassy gaze to him as if noticing for the first time that he was there.

"Hello, Ulquiorra," she said.

He didn't reply to her greeting, choosing to simply watch her stand and stretch again. At length, she glanced out the window.

"I had a strange dream. The stars all flocked to the moon, and then drowned in it. They were all bright against the black sky, and some of them got swallowed up before the moon got them."

"You're rather enthusiastic about remembering your dreams."

"They're much more interesting than this empty world," she rationalized, before a questioning look overtook her. "Ulquiorra, do you know where dreams come from?"

"They're just bi-products of the mind. They don't matter."

She hummed thoughtfully, perusing the blank room with eyes that pleaded for something to draw their attention, just masking the malevolent haze that crept behind the irises. Her fingers twitched restlessly, and Ulquiorra noticed the irregular rigidity of her tendons as her hand tapped her sword.

"Will you spar with me again today?" she asked. Ulquiorra seemed doubtful for a moment, but then turned towards the door with eloquent silence. Smiling slightly, she snatched up her hair clip and followed him outside.

The stars had not been swallowed by the sky or moon, but the two white-clad figures that entered the open night were quickly lost in the sand of the same color, blending into the dunes except for the ebony borders to their clothing and one head of black hair. The young woman loped ahead of her superior, senses suddenly increasing in acuity. In less than an instant, her blade was unsheathed and pressed against the back of the wrist that had been deftly raised to block it. Shoving her back, Ulquiorra was ready for the next attack before she had finished the flip over his head; cero from above, blade from behind. She had a habit of circling her opponent as she fought, so he was accustomed to following her movements after each strike and retreat. Today—or tonight?—she sparred with frenzied speed and focus so intense her stare was clouding over. Feet darting over the sand, she pushed on faster and faster, tearing the veils of deathly still air with fevered haste and bloodlust.

Arrancars don't need to devour souls. The ache of losing the heart is still there, but just as humans outclass animals with rational thought, so arrancars surpass other hollows. Suppression was the key; suppression of the need that they knew isn't quite hunger; suppression so that need could be adjusted to a different form of bloodlust and directed as they saw fit. Directed at things like gaining strength.

But sometimes, suppression slipped up. It affected her in strange ways, and when the need couldn't break out one way, it found another. Once, she had kissed him, back when she still called him "Ulquiorra-sama." She had immediately pulled back and apologized, but it whether out of boldness or blind need, she had done it again not long after, and that time she hadn't pulled back. Ulquiorra could tell it wasn't meant the way humans seemed to. Hollows were murderous, and her kiss would probably have been murder to someone weaker than she was. Hollows survived by consuming weaker souls, after all. Whether out of primal craving or the instincts that told him to dominate his subordinate, Ulquiorra had pressed back, allowing the yearning push to melt into a fiercer struggle to devour until he pinned her back down on the couch, her eyes burning with a tired but nonetheless predatory fire.

That fire was starting to flare out of control now as she slashed and spun and thrashed about in the sand, driving herself into the battle as though it were far more serious than it was. Ulquiorra caught her blade, and she stopped, blinking at him in dazed confusion.

"That's enough," he stated simply, not disregarding the still-fervent glow of a predator's gaze. The sound of a blade sliding into its sheath cut the night and was then followed by the rustle of sand being displaced by feet. However, the sound diminished to half its capacity at length, and then died altogether as Ulquiorra turned to see what she had paused for. She was staring out at the open sand.

"Ulquiorra. Why do we all gather and remain in Las Noches when all of Hueco Mundo is here for the taking?"

"Because we are not beasts anymore. Our leader also resides in the palace."

She was silent for a little longer, still scanning the horizon.

"It's all empty, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Is there nothing worth gaining out there?"

"No."

"Oh."

Silence.

"There was something I wanted while I was here," she murmured. "Before I became an arrancar, there was that burning desire to become something more. Why do we survive when there is nothing further to strive for?"

Ulquiorra turned back towards Las Noches.

"It is better to remain stationary than to fall."

The shuffle, shuffle of feet through sand whispered up again, but she stayed behind, watching the expanse of eternity stretching out before her. Lifting an arm, she reached forwards, fingers straining, muscles stretching, want tingling in her bones. There is something about the endless desert that makes one yearn for something, anything at all, so long as there is something to want for. Greed and necessity are the same thing in Hueco Mundo. If you have nothing to want, to strive for, then your existence stops there and you die at the hand of someone who wants to surpass you, eliminate the competition, or just crush something that happens to be nearby. She stretched her hand out towards the end of the sky and wanted it so badly she thought she felt a heartbeat. Something about endless expanses—long, white deserts or long, white halls—made her yearn for something just beyond her reach. Lowering her arm, she turned to follow the pale, broad shoulders of something to want. One way or another.


End file.
